96 



which measures thirty feet in circumference at six feet from the 

 ground. Six hundred years ago it hore that famous name and, al- 

 though it is over a thousand! years old, its trunk is still sound, and its 

 branches still laden annually with nuts of fine quality. 



In the Baider Valle}', near Balaklava — the point made famous by 

 the Charge of the Light Brigade — stands a famous walnut tree with 

 even a longer record. This grand' old tree over 1200 years of age is 

 yielding annually crops of over one hondred thousand nuts, being 

 divided among the five Tartar families which have owned it. 



During the siege of Amiens by the Spanish in the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, determined to accomplish by a ruse what they could not accom- 

 plish with their cannon, they caused a party of men, dressed as P'rench 

 peasants, to bring a cart-load of nuts to the city for sale. When ad- 

 mitted to the city gates the make-believe French peasants let some of 

 the walnuts fall from their cart. The sentries could not resist the 

 temptation to gather them and as they deserted their posts and stopped 

 to gather the nuts they were set upon by the disguised peasants who 

 took the gates of the city and admitted the Spanish army. 



If the written records from China and Japan were as readily avail- 

 able as those from Europe, we would find much of value regarding 

 the antiquity of nut trees- there. Mr. Reed could, from his personal 

 investigations in China, tell you much along that line. The great age 

 of their nut trees and their records of production for generations 

 would make a most interesting' subject for ;\ talk by him to your 

 organization. 



In America we are limited' to the period since Columbus landed if 

 we restrict ourselves to the record written by man. But Nature has 

 written her own record in enduring stone. In Lampasas County, 

 Texas, fossil remains of pecan trees have been found which date back 

 to the lower cretaceous period, which shows that America liad this 

 nut tree as a source of food for her inhabitants many thousands of 

 years ago. In the San Saba Valley a perfect fossil of the pecan nut 

 which had been 30 feet below the surface was thrown out by a blast 

 from a well. 



It is certain that the earliest explorers found the jjccan largely 

 used by the natiAe Indians. Sturtevant tells us that " tlie pecan was 

 eaten by the Indians and was called by them Pecaunes, and an oil ex- 



